50 book challenge. Book 20.
Jun. 9th, 2007 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deliriumcrowHolly Black, Valiant.
This book ... it afected me on levels that I should probably explore more. It's similar to the touch of a deLint, only more raw, less forgiving, and *much* more cruel. Yes, it's more modern fairy tales, with all the decaying beauty of the New York subway system, and for all that it's actually a Young Adult book, it is not of the "insulate children from all social ills" genre.
It begins with family problems and just goes down hill from there. The main character, not very sure of herself and her place in the world as anything other than a follower, leaves home and starts making some rather bad decisions, but is proud enough of them because they are *her* decisions. Hey, it's a start, and many of us had our start there. Among the homeless, she finds faeries living in New York, and that the medicine they take to reduce the effects of iron makes humans high. Oddly, though, it doesn't seem to have the same anti-drug message that one would expect of YA literature. The point instead seems to be that it's massively stupid to take anything from the fae, be it food, drink, or drugs.
It's incredibly hard to read sometimes, in that it's a pretty damned brutal book. Or at least, painfully honest.
I keep finding myself wishing they wrote books like this when I was younger. Ah well, there's nothing stopping me from reading them now. :)
This book ... it afected me on levels that I should probably explore more. It's similar to the touch of a deLint, only more raw, less forgiving, and *much* more cruel. Yes, it's more modern fairy tales, with all the decaying beauty of the New York subway system, and for all that it's actually a Young Adult book, it is not of the "insulate children from all social ills" genre.
It begins with family problems and just goes down hill from there. The main character, not very sure of herself and her place in the world as anything other than a follower, leaves home and starts making some rather bad decisions, but is proud enough of them because they are *her* decisions. Hey, it's a start, and many of us had our start there. Among the homeless, she finds faeries living in New York, and that the medicine they take to reduce the effects of iron makes humans high. Oddly, though, it doesn't seem to have the same anti-drug message that one would expect of YA literature. The point instead seems to be that it's massively stupid to take anything from the fae, be it food, drink, or drugs.
It's incredibly hard to read sometimes, in that it's a pretty damned brutal book. Or at least, painfully honest.
I keep finding myself wishing they wrote books like this when I was younger. Ah well, there's nothing stopping me from reading them now. :)
